DIRECT ADDRESS is an experiment at the intersection of theater and activism. It’s rooted in the history of abolition and inspired by its greatest prophet, and greatest performer — Frederick Douglass. It’s inspired by the lineage of creative public practice, and public performance that picked up the echo of Douglass’s voice and carried it forward: ACT UP, Ruby Sales, Sylvia Rivera, Paul Watson, and many others — who claimed a public space for prophetic speech. 6 commissioned artists will make new works for public spaces that create containers for discourse, dissent, and public acts of poetry as protest. The works will come together in Los Angeles in an evening of community centered performance before traveling across the country. DIRECT ADDRESS is a practice modeled on movement and community building. It reminds us that abolitionist labor is carried out in performance; in radical oratory, raucous town halls, intimate but loud questioning in public space. It’s theater as abolition.
